Champavati (, ) is an Assamese folk tale. It was first collected in the compilation of Assamese folklore titled Burhi Aair Sadhu, by poet Lakshminath Bezbaroa. According to Assamese scholars, the story is known in Assam and among Assamese people.
The tale is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom, wherein a heroine marries a husband in animal form who reveals he is man underneath. In this case, the heroine marries a husband in animal shape that becomes human, while another girl marries a real animal and dies. Variants of the narrative are located in India and Southeast Asia, with few registered in the Brazilian and Arab/Middle Eastern folktale catalogues.
Summary According to Praphulladatta Goswami, there are at least three published versions of Champavati. In addition, the tale is considered to be an "enduring folk narrative" in Assam, being very popular among the Assamese people and known, for example, in different districts of Lower Assam and in North Lakhimpur.
Bezbaroa's variant A man has two wives, one older (the man's favourite - Laagee) and one young (Aelaagee), and one daughter by each wife. The younger wife's daughter is named Champavati. One day, she goes to the rice fields and sings a song to shoo away the birds, but a voice answers her his desire to marry her. After she tells her mother about the event, Champavati's father agrees to marry her to whoever appears to them; so a snake comes to take the girl as his bride.
The snake and Champavati spend the night together, and the next morning she appears to her family decorated with jewels and golden ornaments. Her father and her step-mother, jealous of the girl's good luck, arrange a marriage between his other daughter and a snake he captures in the jungle. When the snake is placed with the girl, she complains to her mother - who is listening behind the door - that parts of her body are tickling, which the mother takes to mean that her snake husband is decorating her with bridal garments and jewels.
The next morning, they discover that the girl is dead. Their grief and rage are so great that they conspire to kill the Aelaagee (the younger wife) and Champavati, but the python devours both before they can do any harm to both women. The python then grabs his wife Champavati and her mother and takes them to a palace in the forest. They begin to live together. After her mother dies, Champavati is visited by a beggar woman who tells the girl her husband is a god underneath the snakeskin and urges her to burn the snakeskin, while he is away. Champavati heeds the beggar woman's words and does as she said, turning her husband into human definitively.
The same beggar woman returns another day and suggests Champavati to eat from her husband's plate. She decides to follow the suggestion and eats from his plate; she sees some villages inside his mouth and asks her husband to show her the world. He goes to the river and asks her if she wants him to show her the world in his mouth. She agrees. He goes to the middle of the river and opens up his mouth to show her the world. He tells her he will go away for six years, and gives her a ring to protect from any other demon that may want to devour her. He explains that his mother is a cannibal (a rakshasi, in the original; a type of demoness), and that he disobeyed his mother's wishes to see him married to a bride of her choice.
It happens as he predicts, but his ring protects Champavati. She seeks her husband after 6 years and finds him in his mother's house. Her mother-in-law gives her a letter to take to another demoness, with an order to kill Champavati. Her husband intercepts Champavati, takes the letter and kills his own mother to protect his human wife.Goswami, Praphulladatta. Ballads and Tales of Assam: A Study of the Folklore of Assam. University of Gauhati, Assam, 1960. pp. 91-93.Bezbaroa, Lakshiminath. Grandma's Tales. Translated by Pallavi Barua. Hornbill Productions, 2011. pp. 95-101. .
Mrinal Medhi suggests that Bezbaroa's version of Champavati is a combination of two "separate plots", the first part about the marriage between a human maiden and an animal paramour, and a second part where the heroine deals with the advances of her demoness mother-in-law.
Goswami's variant Praphulladatta Goswami collected an homonymous tale from an informant named Srimati Jnanadasundari Barua, in North Lakhimpur. In this tale, also titled Champavati, a man has two wives, the elder his favourite, and a daughter by each wife, the younger one's named Champavati. One day, Champavati is sent to the rice fields to drive the quails away from the paddy. She sings a song, saying that she will give fried rice to the quails, when a voice replies to her song that they will marry Champavati. The girl comments about it to her mother and father, and is convinced to reply to the mysterious voice. She does and discovers the voice's owner: a serpent. Wanting to see her stepdaughter killed, her father's first wife says she must honor the promise, and locks the girl in her room with the snake.
The girl cries aloud she is feeling something on her body, and the stepmother thinks the girl is being devoured. However, Champavati exits the room with a smile and decorated with jewels on her body. Jealous of Champavati's luck, the elder wife orders her husband to find another serpent husband to her own daughter, hoping the girl can experience the same fate as her half-sister. After Champavati leaves with her husband, a serpent is brought and married to the girl, then it is locked in the same room with her. The serpent begins to swallow the girl piece by piece (feet, waist, breast and neck) and the girl complains about it, but her mother dismisses it as her son-in-law decorating her body. The next morning, the elder wife goes to check on her daughter and, finding only a bloated serpent, lets out an anguished cry.
Back to Champavati, she lives her days in happiness in the forest, but wishes her husband was not a serpent. One day, a beggar woman pays her a visit and explains the serpent is a god in disguise who takes off his snakeskin at night and goes out, so she can pretend to be asleep and burn it the next time he takes it off. Following the beggar woman's suggestion, Champavati does as instructed, takes the snakeskin and tosses it in the fire. The human snake husband rushes in and writhes in pain, feeling a burning sensation. Champavati quickly rubs oil and water on his body, then fans it, and he becomes a handsome man permanently.Goswami, Praphulladatta. Ballads and Tales of Assam: A Study of the Folklore of Assam. University of Gauhati, Assam, 1960. p. 93.
Chandra Barua's variant Author Sri Atul Chandra Barua published another version of Champavati in his work Sandhiyar Sadhu ("संधियार साधु"). In his version, titled হুৰ, হুৰ, ("Hur, Hur, bota chorai"; English: "Hur Hur, quail birds" or "Away, Away, Quails"), a man has a plantation and two wives, Lagi and Elagi, and one daughter of marriageable age by each. The Lagi wife's daughter is spared the more hard work, while the Elagi wife's daughter is ordered to look after the paddy fields and tie the cows in the barn. One day, Elagi's daughter goes to the paddy fields to shoo away the birds from the crops, singing verses to chase away the quail birds and asking them not to eat the rice. However, after she sings the verses, a voice comes from somewhere, uttering a distic in response, saying it will have the rice and the girl too. The girl sings in response to the verses, and a snake comes out of the forest.
The girl rushes back home and informs her parents about it. The man and his Lagi wife join the girl to investigate and she sings the same verses to draws the voice; the voice's response comes from the forest, and sings the same verses. The couple enter the forest to find the owner of the voice and find a python ("ajogor sap") that turns into a human person in front of them. The Lagi wife thinks to herself that, if her stepdaughter marries the python, the animal will surely devour her, which clears the way for her own daughter to inherit everything, so Lagi tells her husband the python disguise must be an illusion cast by the gods and they must not anger them, so they should speed up the girl's marriage. Elagi wife cries for her daughter's marriage to the animal, fearing it will devour her, but the man captures the animal and brings it home, then readies his daughter, marries her to the snake and places her in a room, while Elagi remains outside the door. At midnight, Elagi's daughter cries out for her mother that something is happening to her feet, then to her hands, then to her neck, until it falls silent. The following morning, Elagi fears her daughter is dead, but she comes out of the room safe and sound and wearing golden ornaments on her body. Surprised that her stepdaughter came out in such a way, Lagi convices her husband to find their daughter another python, which the man captures and brings home. Lagi's daughter goes to sleep in her room, when the large snake wakes up and begins to swallow her, starting with her feet. The girl complains to her mother that she is being devoured, first by the foot, and the woman simply dismisses it, as the animal continues to eat the girl whole. The following morning, the Lagi wife goes to check on her daughter and cannot find her, only the snake.
Taruni Devi's variant In a variant collected from seventy-year-old teller Taruni Devi, from Kenduguri, Jorhat, with the title Champavati, a cultivator has two wives and two daughters, one of them called Champavati. The girl's stepmother withholds rice from her. She goes to scare away the quails from the paddy fields and sings a song about it, when a voice from the forest replies with their own verses saying they will marry Champavati. The girl reports the incident to her father, who goes with her to listen to the song and agrees to the voice's request. A large snake appears and takes Champavati with him. The teller explains the snake as the son of a deity cursed to snake form, removes the snakeskin and goes to Heaven. In their marital home, a beggar woman advises Champavati to burn the snakeskin while her husband is out, then she is to give him Bhimkal (a type of banana) and Karkara bhat (steamed rice). It happens thus and Champavati's husband is turned to human form. Meanwhile, her stepmother, desirous of having her own daughter experience the same luck as Champavati, finds a real snake in the forest which she marries to her daughter. The snake eats her.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as AaTh 433C, "The Serpent Husband and The Jealous Girl", a subtype of type AaTh 433, "The Prince as Serpent".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 148. In this tale type, a girl marries a snake who gives her jewels and ornaments and becomes human after the burning of his snakeskin; another girl tries to imitate with a real snake, with disastrous and fatal results.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 148.
However, in his own revision of the folk type index, published in 2004, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther subsumed types AaTh 433 ("The Prince as Serpent"), AaTh 433A ("A Serpent Carries a Princess to Its Castle") and AaTh 433C under a new type: ATU 433B, "King Lindworm".
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